WASHINGTON — A federal judge will hear arguments Thursday on whether former Trump adviser Steve Bannon should have to begin his four-month prison sentence for defying subpoenas from the Jan. 6 Committee after a higher court rejected his appeal.

Bannon was sentenced more than a year and a half ago, in October 2022, to four months behind bars, the same sentence currently being served by former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who also refused to comply with a Jan. 6 Committee subpoena. Bannon was found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress in July 2022 for defying the committee’s subpoenas.

“The defendant chose allegiance to Donald Trump over compliance with the law,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Gaston, who now serves on special counsel Jack Smith’s team, told jurors during closing arguments in 2022.

Bannon’s sentence was put on hold pending appeal, and his lawyers made their case to a three-judge federal appeals court panel in November. The appeals court upheld Bannon’s conviction in May, and federal prosecutors soon filed a motion asking U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to order Bannon to report to prison. Federal prosecutors told Nichols there was “no legal basis” for the continued stay of the sentence after the federal appeals court rejected the appeal.

Bannon smiled as he went through security to enter the courthouse Thursday morning. A person nearby said “Trump ’24!” to him and Bannon smiled and shook his hand.

Bannon’s lawyers have argued that the sentence should be stayed until they appeal it to the full appeals court and the Supreme Court. Any delay, of course, would benefit Bannon if Trump is elected president in November and decides — just as he did on the last day of his presidency on Jan. 20, 2021 — to pardon Bannon on federal criminal charges.

Nichols, a Trump appointee, has overseen a number of Jan. 6 cases. He’s the judge who rejected the government’s use of an obstruction of an official proceeding charge, which has been used against hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, as well as Trump himself. That case ultimately bubbled up to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on the use of the statute in April. On Wednesday, Nichols sentenced a Jan. 6 defendant who assaulted law enforcement officers with bear spray — and who was caught thanks to a sting operation that a woman launched on the dating app Bumble — to more than six years in federal prison.